Leverage - Achieve Much More with the Same Effort
"Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the Earth."
- Archimedes
To lift a heavy object, you have a choice: use leverage or not. You can try to lift the object directly – risking injury – or you can use a lever, such as a jack or a long plank of wood, to transfer some of the weight, and then lift the object that way.
Which approach is wiser? Will you succeed without using leverage? Maybe. But you can lift so much more with leverage, and do it so much more easily!
So what has this got to do with your life and career?
The answer is "a lot". By applying the concept of leverage to business and career success, you can, with a little thought, accomplish very much more than you can without it. Without leverage, you may work very hard, but your rewards are limited by the hours you put in. With leverage, you can break this connection and, in time, achieve very much more.
Note:
We're not referring to financial leverage here. Financial leverage, using "other people's money" to grow your business, can be a successful growth strategy. However, it's outside the scope of this article.
Levers of Success
So how can you apply leverage to your career? And how can you achieve much more, while – if you choose to – reducing the number of hours that you work?
To do this, you'll need to learn how to use the leverage of:-
* Time (yours and that of other people).
* Resources.
* Knowledge and education.
* Technology.
Time Leverage
Using the leverage of time is the most fundamental strategy for success. There are only so many hours in a day that you can work. If you use only your own time, you can achieve only so much. If you leverage other people's time, you can increase productivity to an extraordinary extent.
To leverage YOUR OWN time.
* Practice effective time management. Eliminate unnecessary activities, and focus your effort on the things that really matter.
* As part of this, learn how to prioritize, so that you focus your energy on the activities that give the greatest return for the time invested.
* Use goal setting to think about what matters to you in the long term, set clear targets, and motivate yourself to achieve those targets.
To leverage other people's time.
* Learn how to delegate work to other people.
* Train and empower others.
* Bring in experts and consultants to cover skill or knowledge gaps.
* Outsource non-core tasks to people with the experience to do them more efficiently.
Providing that you do things properly, the time and money that you invest in leveraging other people's time is usually well spent. Remember, though, that you'll almost always have to "pay" up front in some way in order to reap the longer-term benefits of using leverage.
Tip 1:
This is why delegation is such an important skill: If you can't delegate effectively, you can never expand your productivity beyond the work that you can personally deliver. This means that your career will quickly stall, and while you may be appreciated for your hard work, you'll never be truly successful. Use these skill-builder resources to learn to delegate: Delegation, Successful Delegation, The Delegation Dilemma, and Bite-Sized Training: Delegation.
It's also one of the reasons that micromanagement is such a vice: You spend so much time managing a few people that you constrain the amount of leverage you can exert. See our Avoiding Micromanagement article for more on this.
Tip 2:
As you learn to use the leverage these things give you, you'll find that using them involves some up-front costs, such as the investment of time and resources you'll need to make to get someone started with a job that you'd otherwise need to do.
While it's natural to want to conserve these resources ("I don't have time to train him - it's got to be done by next Tuesday!"), if you don't make these investments, you'll lock yourself into the old way of doing things - and this will limit you to achieving only those things that you can do by yourself.
Resource Leverage
You can also exert leverage by getting the most from your assets, and taking full advantage of your personal strengths.
You have a wide range of skills, talents, experiences, thoughts, and ideas. These can, and should, be used in the best combination. What relevant skills and strengths do you have that others don't? How can you use these to best effect, and how can you improve them so that they're truly remarkable? What relevant assets do you have that others don't? Can you use these to create leverage? Do you have connections that others don't have? Or financial resources? Or some other asset that you can use to greater effect?
A good way of thinking about this is to conduct a personal SWOT analysis, focusing on identifying strengths and assets, and expanding from these to identify the opportunities they give you. (An advantage of SWOT is that it also helps you spot critical weaknesses that need to be covered.)
Tip:
As you do this, think about how you can help others with your strengths and resources. Remember, when you can give to others, the more you're likely to get in return. (Just make sure that you're clear as to how you will be rewarded!)
Knowledge and Education Leverage
Another significant lever of success is applied knowledge. Combined with education and action, this can generate tremendous leverage.
Learning by experience is slow and painful. If you can find more formal ways of learning, you'll progress much more quickly. What's more, if you select a good course, you'll have a solid foundation to your knowledge, and one that doesn't have high-risk gaps. This is why people working in life-or-death areas (such as architects, airline pilots, medical doctors and suchlike) need long and thorough training. After all, would you want to be operated on by an unqualified surgeon?
While few of us operate in quite such immediately critical areas, by determining what you need to know, and then acquiring that knowledge, you can avoid many years of slow, painful trial and error learning.
In the same way, it's inefficient if many people in an organization have to learn how to do their work by trial and error. A much better way is for organizations to capture the knowledge gained by the first few in some way and pass it on to others. This is the core of the "knowledge management" concept. Premium Members of the Career Excellence Club can hear more about this in our Book Insight on The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management.
The keys to successfully leveraging knowledge and education are: firstly, knowing what you need to learn; secondly knowing to what level you need to learn it; thirdly, being very focused and selective in your choices; and fourthly, in taking the time to earn the qualifications you need.
Even then, having more education or more knowledge isn't necessarily a point of leverage. These become advantages only when they can be directly applied to your career goals and aspirations--and when they're used actively and intelligently to do something useful.
By hiring, consulting with, and outsourcing to other people, you gain the leverage of their knowledge and education as well as their resources. This only works if you choose the right people - the wrong ones can slow you and drag you down. Don't let this happen!
Technology Leverage
Finding technology leverage is all about thinking about how you work, and using technology to automate as much of this as you can.
At a simple level, you might find that all you need to keep you in touch with home and work is a laptop computer. Alternatively, a personal digital assistant (PDA) can help you maintain a single, convenient, properly-backed-up time management system. Cell phones that access email and browse the web are handy tools for making the best of your downtime during working hours or while traveling.
If you're a slow typist, voice recognition software can help you dictate documents and save time. Tools like Google Desktop Search (http://desktop.google.com) can help you manage and find documents in such a way that you no longer need to file digital documents. And Google itself provides a great, quick way of finding relevant information online.
At a more sophisticated level, you may find that you can use simple desktop databases like Microsoft Access to automate simple work processes. If you do a lot of routine data processing (for example, if you run many similar projects) you can find that this saves you a great deal of time. More than this, you only need to set up a process once with a tool like this - afterwards the process will be executed the same way each time, by whomever initiates the process (this reduces training, meaning that new team members can become productive much more quickly, meaning that you can scale your operations – and your success – more quickly.)
Businesses can choose from a wide array of software solutions. Some of these can automate or simplify tasks that are otherwise very time-consuming. Customer relationship management (CRM) databases can bring tremendous benefits for sales and customer service organizations, as can point-of-sale (PoS) inventory systems for organizations that need to track and manage inventory. Websites and web-based catalogs can give clients easy access to up-to-date product information, and help them place orders simply and easily. And blogs and email-based newsletters help people stay in contact with thousands of people quickly and easily. All of these use technology to provide tremendous leverage.
Key Points
Using leverage is the art and science of getting much more done with the same, or less, effort. At a simple level, this can free up your time to concentrate on things with the highest priority. At a more sophisticated level, it helps you achieve at a much higher level.
When you invest time and resources to leverage technology - as well as to leverage time, resources, and knowledge (both your own, and that of other people) - you have a recipe for unprecedented success. Use what you and others have to your advantage, and see how far it will take you.
For a detailed discussion of the concept of leverage, see our Make Time For Success! course on time management and personal productivity. This ebook presents Mind Tools leverage techniques and shows you specific ways to achieve greater success. Planning and scheduling, organizing, and delegating are just a few of the topics covered in detail.
Apply This to Your Life:
* Complete a personal SWOT analysis. This will help give you a real sense of what you're good at and what activities might benefit from some outside help. From there, you can start to build a leveraging strategy to maximize your productivity and performance.
* Look for a mentor who understands and uses leverage, and learn from his or her experiences. This is an example of using leverage to learn more about leveraging - so that exponential factor kicks in again.
* Increase your personal expectations. Take a look at your current goals, and ask yourself how much further you could push those goals by using leverage on a consistent basis. You may far surpass your pre-leverage goals once you commit to "working smart."
* Surround yourself with a network of great people who have skills, knowledge, and expertise that you don't possess. Look for opportunities to create synergy, and leverage the talents of everyone involved. When you work together, you can accomplish so much more than going it alone.
Spread the Word:
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
In Flow
Maximizing Productivity Through Improved Focus
What is focus?
Let's take an example. Have you ever seen a hassled mom trying to get her young daughter to leave whatever she is doing and do something else? It's a common enough sight: Young children can get so wrapped up in whatever they're doing that it takes a lot of persuasion to get them to switch their attention.
This ability to focus totally on one thing comes naturally to young children, but it's one of the biggest challenges that most of the rest of us face. We struggle to concentrate and, because of this, fail to get on with the work we're doing.
Some people, though, seem able to focus intensely on what they're doing, and perform exceptionally well as a result. Modern psychologists refer to this state of absolute absorption or concentration in what we are doing, as being "in flow."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first described the concept, suggests that this state of being able to achieve total focus applies to almost every field of activity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow involves "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost". So how do we enter this "ecstatic" state?
Creating the Right Environment
Flow is easiest to achieve when:
* You have enough pressure on you to stay engaged, but not so much that it's harming your performance.
* You believe that your skills are good enough to perform well.
* You have distraction under control.
* You are attending to the task in hand, rather than analyzing and critiquing your performance.
* You are relaxed and alert.
* You are thinking positively, and have eliminated all negative thoughts.
Some of these are hard to achieve in a busy office environment. Your phone rings, your e-mail beeps to indicate that a new message has arrived, and co-workers pop by to ask you questions. At the same time you can't stop thinking about a whole range of personal and work issues that are causing you stress, not least of which is the sheer quantity of work which is piling up.
So if you're to have a good chance of getting into flow, you need to sort out all of these distractions first. Here are some practical things you can do:
* Get comfortable, and eliminate distraction from your environment. Rearrange your working environment so that you eliminate as many distractions as possible. Change the orientation of your desk, so that people passing don't distract you. Use plants and screens to damp noise. Adjust furniture so that it's comfortable. If untidiness distracts you, tidy up. Make sure the temperature is comfortable, and that your work area is well lit.
* Keep interruptions at bay. Put up the "Do not disturb" sign, switch off your cell phone, close your email reader and web browser, and do anything. anything that will block the most common things that distract you from work. You'll be surprised at how much you can get done in just one hour of uninterrupted work, which may be the equivalent of plodding on for several hours if you're handling interruptions at the same time. For more on this, read our article on managing interruptions.
* Manage your stress. Identify the sources of stress you experience with a Stress Diary, and then work to reduce or eliminate the greatest stressors. One of the most common sources of stress at work is feeling that you have too much to do. See our section on time management to find out how to deal with this. And if you're under so much pressure to perform that this is distracting you, use relaxation imagery to calm yourself down.
* Keep a To-Do List or Action Program. Empty your mind of those distracting things you have to do by writing them down in a to-do list or action program. You'll be amazed how much this can clear your mind! Do the same for worries - write them down and schedule a time to deal with them. And don't try to multi-task: Just concentrate on doing one thing well.
* Think positively. It's very hard to concentrate if you have negative thoughts swirling around your mind. What's more, the negativity they cause undermines the way we deal with work, with people and with issues, often making things more difficult. So the final step in preparing to concentrate is to stop thinking negatively and start thinking positively.
Successful athletes commonly use relaxation and positive thinking techniques as they face the challenge of competition. They deal with their feelings of nervousness with relaxation techniques, and by reminding themselves that they have the skills needed to succeed. And when they are out there running, jumping, or throwing, they concentrate on what they're doing, rather than on the distractions around them.
Getting Into the Flow
With all of that in place, you can start to practice your concentration skills. Try to focus on one task at a time to the exclusion of others, as far as you can.
Before you know it, you will be in flow. You'll be so involved in any activity you undertake that nothing else seems to matter. Not only will your productivity increase, you'll find that your work is more rewarding. Flow is productive, flow is fun, and flow is essential for real success!
Key Points:
When you achieve a state of flow, you're able to achieve more because all of your thoughts and energy are focused on the task in hand. To get into a state of flow, you need to eliminate interruptions and distractions from your environment.
More than this, you need to empty your mind of worries, anxieties, negative thinking, and all those little "mental notes" that flit in and out of our consciousness. This sounds hard, but in reality is quite easy if you take the time to get into the right habits.
Apply This to Your Life:
* Look for ways in which you could improve your work environment so that you can get into the flow more efficiently and more often. If you work in an open-plan office, consider using a meeting or rest area when you need to concentrate. Alternatively, use headphones to block out the noise when you're working at your terminal.
* Be disciplined about shutting down your web browser, and only checking your e-mail once you have completed a task.
* Follow our advice, set up an effective time management system, and get on top of the stressful thoughts buzzing around your mind. You'll be amazed by how much better you can concentrate if you get everything down on paper!
* If you get stuck with a certain part of your task, don't succumb to self-distraction and hurry off to get a cup of coffee. Instead, remind yourself that you have the skills to break through the problem, and maintain your focus on finding a solution.
What is focus?
Let's take an example. Have you ever seen a hassled mom trying to get her young daughter to leave whatever she is doing and do something else? It's a common enough sight: Young children can get so wrapped up in whatever they're doing that it takes a lot of persuasion to get them to switch their attention.
This ability to focus totally on one thing comes naturally to young children, but it's one of the biggest challenges that most of the rest of us face. We struggle to concentrate and, because of this, fail to get on with the work we're doing.
Some people, though, seem able to focus intensely on what they're doing, and perform exceptionally well as a result. Modern psychologists refer to this state of absolute absorption or concentration in what we are doing, as being "in flow."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who first described the concept, suggests that this state of being able to achieve total focus applies to almost every field of activity. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow involves "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost". So how do we enter this "ecstatic" state?
Creating the Right Environment
Flow is easiest to achieve when:
* You have enough pressure on you to stay engaged, but not so much that it's harming your performance.
* You believe that your skills are good enough to perform well.
* You have distraction under control.
* You are attending to the task in hand, rather than analyzing and critiquing your performance.
* You are relaxed and alert.
* You are thinking positively, and have eliminated all negative thoughts.
Some of these are hard to achieve in a busy office environment. Your phone rings, your e-mail beeps to indicate that a new message has arrived, and co-workers pop by to ask you questions. At the same time you can't stop thinking about a whole range of personal and work issues that are causing you stress, not least of which is the sheer quantity of work which is piling up.
So if you're to have a good chance of getting into flow, you need to sort out all of these distractions first. Here are some practical things you can do:
* Get comfortable, and eliminate distraction from your environment. Rearrange your working environment so that you eliminate as many distractions as possible. Change the orientation of your desk, so that people passing don't distract you. Use plants and screens to damp noise. Adjust furniture so that it's comfortable. If untidiness distracts you, tidy up. Make sure the temperature is comfortable, and that your work area is well lit.
* Keep interruptions at bay. Put up the "Do not disturb" sign, switch off your cell phone, close your email reader and web browser, and do anything. anything that will block the most common things that distract you from work. You'll be surprised at how much you can get done in just one hour of uninterrupted work, which may be the equivalent of plodding on for several hours if you're handling interruptions at the same time. For more on this, read our article on managing interruptions.
* Manage your stress. Identify the sources of stress you experience with a Stress Diary, and then work to reduce or eliminate the greatest stressors. One of the most common sources of stress at work is feeling that you have too much to do. See our section on time management to find out how to deal with this. And if you're under so much pressure to perform that this is distracting you, use relaxation imagery to calm yourself down.
* Keep a To-Do List or Action Program. Empty your mind of those distracting things you have to do by writing them down in a to-do list or action program. You'll be amazed how much this can clear your mind! Do the same for worries - write them down and schedule a time to deal with them. And don't try to multi-task: Just concentrate on doing one thing well.
* Think positively. It's very hard to concentrate if you have negative thoughts swirling around your mind. What's more, the negativity they cause undermines the way we deal with work, with people and with issues, often making things more difficult. So the final step in preparing to concentrate is to stop thinking negatively and start thinking positively.
Successful athletes commonly use relaxation and positive thinking techniques as they face the challenge of competition. They deal with their feelings of nervousness with relaxation techniques, and by reminding themselves that they have the skills needed to succeed. And when they are out there running, jumping, or throwing, they concentrate on what they're doing, rather than on the distractions around them.
Getting Into the Flow
With all of that in place, you can start to practice your concentration skills. Try to focus on one task at a time to the exclusion of others, as far as you can.
Before you know it, you will be in flow. You'll be so involved in any activity you undertake that nothing else seems to matter. Not only will your productivity increase, you'll find that your work is more rewarding. Flow is productive, flow is fun, and flow is essential for real success!
Key Points:
When you achieve a state of flow, you're able to achieve more because all of your thoughts and energy are focused on the task in hand. To get into a state of flow, you need to eliminate interruptions and distractions from your environment.
More than this, you need to empty your mind of worries, anxieties, negative thinking, and all those little "mental notes" that flit in and out of our consciousness. This sounds hard, but in reality is quite easy if you take the time to get into the right habits.
Apply This to Your Life:
* Look for ways in which you could improve your work environment so that you can get into the flow more efficiently and more often. If you work in an open-plan office, consider using a meeting or rest area when you need to concentrate. Alternatively, use headphones to block out the noise when you're working at your terminal.
* Be disciplined about shutting down your web browser, and only checking your e-mail once you have completed a task.
* Follow our advice, set up an effective time management system, and get on top of the stressful thoughts buzzing around your mind. You'll be amazed by how much better you can concentrate if you get everything down on paper!
* If you get stuck with a certain part of your task, don't succumb to self-distraction and hurry off to get a cup of coffee. Instead, remind yourself that you have the skills to break through the problem, and maintain your focus on finding a solution.
Backward Goal
Backward Goal-Setting
Using Backward Planning to Set Goals
If your goal is to become an account executive within the next five years, where do you start your planning process? Or if your team needs to redesign the company's organizational structure, where do you begin?
In planning, most of us would usually start building our plan from start to finish. What do you have to do first, second, third, and so on? What milestones do you have to reach before you can continue on with the next step in the plan? By what date does each step need to be completed?
This is a solid form of Personal Goal Setting that works very well. When combined with the Golden Rules of Goal Setting, you have a motivating formula that can help you actively move yourself forward.
A New Approach
However, there's another, simple but lesser-used method of goal setting that can be equally as powerful. It can show you other ways to achieve the same result, and it can help you deal with the necessary unknowns of goal setting that can so often cause you to give up on your plan entirely.
It's called backward planning, backward goal-setting, or backward design, and it's used quite often in education and training. The idea is to start with your ultimate objective, your end goal, and then work backward from there to develop your plan. By starting at the end and looking back, you can mentally prepare yourself for success, map out the specific milestones you need to reach, and identify where in your plan you have to be particularly energetic or creative to achieve the desired results.
It's much like a good presentation, when the presenter tells you where he's headed right at the beginning. Then, as the presentation unfolds, it's easy for you to follow the concepts and think critically about what's being said. If you have to figure out the main points as they come, your energy is often used up by just trying to keep up.
The Backward Planning Process
Here's how it works:
1. Write down your ultimate goal. What specifically do you want to achieve, and by what date?
Example: "By January 1, 2013, I will be the key accounts director for Crunchy Chips International."
2. Then ask yourself what milestone you need to accomplish just before that, in order to achieve your ultimate goal. What specifically do you have to do, and by when, so that you're in a position to reach your final objective?
Example: "By September 30, 2011, I will successfully complete the executive training program offered by Crunchy Chips International."
3. Then work backward some more. What do you need to complete before that second-to-last goal?
Example: "By March 1, 2011, I will submit my application for the executive training program, outlining my successes as a key accounts manager, and I will be accepted into the program."
4. Work back again. What do you need to do to make sure the previous goal is reached?
Example: "By January 1, 2011, I will complete my second year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will earn the prestigious Key Accounts Manager of the Year award."
5. Continue to work back, in the same way, until you identify the very first milestone that you need to accomplish.
Example: "By January 1, 2010, I will complete my first year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will be rewarded for my performance by gaining responsibility for clients purchasing over $10 million per year."
"By January 1, 2009, I will be promoted to key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will have responsibility for clients purchasing over $1 million per quarter."
When you read a backward plan, it doesn't look much different from a traditional forward plan. However, creating a backward plan is VERY different. You need to force yourself to think from a completely new perspective, to help you see things that you might miss if you use a traditional chronological process.
This can also help you avoid spending time on unnecessary or unproductive activities along the way. Furthermore, it highlights points of tension within the plan, showing where you'll need to be particularly creative to make the next step successfully.
Key Points
On the surface, backward planning doesn't seem much different from traditional goal-setting processes. You start with a basic vision, and then you ask yourself what needs to be done to achieve that vision. You can read your plan from the beginning to the end, or from the end back to the beginning.
Backward planning, however, is more than reversing the direction of your traditional plan. It's about adopting a different perspective and, perhaps, identifying different milestones as a result. It's a great supplement to traditional planning, and it gives you a much fuller appreciation for what it may take to achieve success. After all, the more alternatives you have, the better your final plan will likely be.
Using Backward Planning to Set Goals
If your goal is to become an account executive within the next five years, where do you start your planning process? Or if your team needs to redesign the company's organizational structure, where do you begin?
In planning, most of us would usually start building our plan from start to finish. What do you have to do first, second, third, and so on? What milestones do you have to reach before you can continue on with the next step in the plan? By what date does each step need to be completed?
This is a solid form of Personal Goal Setting that works very well. When combined with the Golden Rules of Goal Setting, you have a motivating formula that can help you actively move yourself forward.
A New Approach
However, there's another, simple but lesser-used method of goal setting that can be equally as powerful. It can show you other ways to achieve the same result, and it can help you deal with the necessary unknowns of goal setting that can so often cause you to give up on your plan entirely.
It's called backward planning, backward goal-setting, or backward design, and it's used quite often in education and training. The idea is to start with your ultimate objective, your end goal, and then work backward from there to develop your plan. By starting at the end and looking back, you can mentally prepare yourself for success, map out the specific milestones you need to reach, and identify where in your plan you have to be particularly energetic or creative to achieve the desired results.
It's much like a good presentation, when the presenter tells you where he's headed right at the beginning. Then, as the presentation unfolds, it's easy for you to follow the concepts and think critically about what's being said. If you have to figure out the main points as they come, your energy is often used up by just trying to keep up.
The Backward Planning Process
Here's how it works:
1. Write down your ultimate goal. What specifically do you want to achieve, and by what date?
Example: "By January 1, 2013, I will be the key accounts director for Crunchy Chips International."
2. Then ask yourself what milestone you need to accomplish just before that, in order to achieve your ultimate goal. What specifically do you have to do, and by when, so that you're in a position to reach your final objective?
Example: "By September 30, 2011, I will successfully complete the executive training program offered by Crunchy Chips International."
3. Then work backward some more. What do you need to complete before that second-to-last goal?
Example: "By March 1, 2011, I will submit my application for the executive training program, outlining my successes as a key accounts manager, and I will be accepted into the program."
4. Work back again. What do you need to do to make sure the previous goal is reached?
Example: "By January 1, 2011, I will complete my second year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will earn the prestigious Key Accounts Manager of the Year award."
5. Continue to work back, in the same way, until you identify the very first milestone that you need to accomplish.
Example: "By January 1, 2010, I will complete my first year as a key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will be rewarded for my performance by gaining responsibility for clients purchasing over $10 million per year."
"By January 1, 2009, I will be promoted to key accounts manager with Crunchy Chips International, and I will have responsibility for clients purchasing over $1 million per quarter."
When you read a backward plan, it doesn't look much different from a traditional forward plan. However, creating a backward plan is VERY different. You need to force yourself to think from a completely new perspective, to help you see things that you might miss if you use a traditional chronological process.
This can also help you avoid spending time on unnecessary or unproductive activities along the way. Furthermore, it highlights points of tension within the plan, showing where you'll need to be particularly creative to make the next step successfully.
Key Points
On the surface, backward planning doesn't seem much different from traditional goal-setting processes. You start with a basic vision, and then you ask yourself what needs to be done to achieve that vision. You can read your plan from the beginning to the end, or from the end back to the beginning.
Backward planning, however, is more than reversing the direction of your traditional plan. It's about adopting a different perspective and, perhaps, identifying different milestones as a result. It's a great supplement to traditional planning, and it gives you a much fuller appreciation for what it may take to achieve success. After all, the more alternatives you have, the better your final plan will likely be.
Golden Rules
Golden Rules of Goal Setting
Five Rules to Set Yourself Up for Success
Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?... Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?... Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?
If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: Having a million dollars in the bank is only proof of success if one of your goals is to amass riches. If your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is suddenly contrary to how you would define success.
To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want." and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between there are some very well defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish.
Here are our Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting:
The Five Golden Rules
Rule #1: Set Goals that Motivate You When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: This means making sure it is something that's important to you and there is value in achieving it. If you have little interest in the outcome, or it is irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of you putting in the work to make it happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.
Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one. Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude. When you don't have this "must do" factor, you risk putting off what you need to do to make the goal a reality. This in turn leaves you feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself, both of which are de-motivating. And you can end up in a very destructive "I can't do anything or be successful at anything" frame of mind.
Tip:
To make sure your goal is motivating, write down why it's valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, "If I were to share my goal with others, how would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?" You can use this motivating value statement to help you if you start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your ability to actually make it happen.
Rule #2: Set SMART Goals
You have probably heard of "SMART goals" already. But do you always apply the rule? The simple fact is that for any goal to be achieved it must be designed to be SMART. There are many variations on what SMART stands for, but the essence is this - Goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time Bound
Set Specific Goals
You goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are not achievable because they don't provide sufficient direction. Remember, you need goals to show you the way. How useful would a map of the United States be if there were only state borders marked on it and you were trying to get from Miami to Los Angeles? Do you even know which state you are starting from let alone which one you're headed to? Make it as easy as you can to get where you want to go by defining precisely where it is you want to end up.
Set Measurable Goals
Include precise amounts, dates, etc in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as "To reduce expenses" how will you know when you are successful? In one month's time if you have a 1% reduction or in two year's time when you have a 10% reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you actually achieved something.
Set Attainable Goals
Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.
However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. Accomplishing a goal that you didn't have to work very hard for can be an anticlimax at best, and can also make you fear setting future goals that carry a risk of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals you hit the balance you need. These are the types of goals that require you to "raise the bar" and they bring the greatest personal satisfaction.
Set Relevant Goals
Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time - and your life - away.
Set Time-Bound Goals
You goals must have a deadline. This again, is so that you know when to celebrate your success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.
Rule #3: Set Goals in Writing
The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might". For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." Not, "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an out if you get sidetracked.
Tip 1:
Frame your goal statement positively. If you want to improve your retention rates say, "I will hold on to all existing employees for the next quarter" rather than "I will reduce employee turnover." The first one is motivating; the second one still has a get-out clause "allowing" you to succeed even if some employees leave.
Tip 2:
If you use a To Do List, make yourself a To Do List template that has your goals at the top of it. If you use an Action Program (see Mind Tools' Make Time for Success! course), then your goals should be at the top of your Project Catalog.)
Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself everyday of what it is you intend to do. Put them on your walls, desk, computer monitor, bathroom mirror or refrigerator as a constant reminder. You can even post them in the Mind Tools Career Excellence Club forum and share them with other members, for added motivation.
Rule #4: Make an Action Plan
This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. Read our article on Action Plans for more on how to do this.
Rule #5: Stick With It!
Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep you on track and remember to review your goals continuously. Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly. Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.
Key Points
Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. Unless you clearly define exactly what you want and understand why you want it the first place, your odds of success are considerably reduced. By following the Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting you can set goals with confidence and enjoy the satisfaction that comes along with knowing you achieved what you set out to do. What will you decide to accomplish today?
Five Rules to Set Yourself Up for Success
Have you thought about what you want to be doing in five years' time?... Are you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment?... Do you know what you want to have achieved by the end of today?
If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. Without goals you lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of your life's direction; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding. Think about it: Having a million dollars in the bank is only proof of success if one of your goals is to amass riches. If your goal is to practice acts of charity, then keeping the money for yourself is suddenly contrary to how you would define success.
To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want." and expect it to happen. Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work to actually do it. In between there are some very well defined steps that transcend the specifics of each goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish.
Here are our Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting:
The Five Golden Rules
Rule #1: Set Goals that Motivate You When you set goals for yourself, it is important that they motivate you: This means making sure it is something that's important to you and there is value in achieving it. If you have little interest in the outcome, or it is irrelevant given the larger picture, then the chances of you putting in the work to make it happen are slim. Motivation is key to achieving goals.
Set goals that relate to the high priorities in your life. Without this type of focus you can end up with far too many goals, leaving you too little time to devote to each one. Goal achievement requires commitment, so to maximize the likelihood of success, you need to feel a sense of urgency and have an "I must do this" attitude. When you don't have this "must do" factor, you risk putting off what you need to do to make the goal a reality. This in turn leaves you feeling disappointed and frustrated with yourself, both of which are de-motivating. And you can end up in a very destructive "I can't do anything or be successful at anything" frame of mind.
Tip:
To make sure your goal is motivating, write down why it's valuable and important to you. Ask yourself, "If I were to share my goal with others, how would I tell them to convince them it was a worthwhile goal?" You can use this motivating value statement to help you if you start to doubt yourself or lose confidence in your ability to actually make it happen.
Rule #2: Set SMART Goals
You have probably heard of "SMART goals" already. But do you always apply the rule? The simple fact is that for any goal to be achieved it must be designed to be SMART. There are many variations on what SMART stands for, but the essence is this - Goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time Bound
Set Specific Goals
You goal must be clear and well defined. Vague or generalized goals are not achievable because they don't provide sufficient direction. Remember, you need goals to show you the way. How useful would a map of the United States be if there were only state borders marked on it and you were trying to get from Miami to Los Angeles? Do you even know which state you are starting from let alone which one you're headed to? Make it as easy as you can to get where you want to go by defining precisely where it is you want to end up.
Set Measurable Goals
Include precise amounts, dates, etc in your goals so you can measure your degree of success. If your goal is simply defined as "To reduce expenses" how will you know when you are successful? In one month's time if you have a 1% reduction or in two year's time when you have a 10% reduction? Without a way to measure your success you miss out on the celebration that comes with knowing you actually achieved something.
Set Attainable Goals
Make sure that it's possible to achieve the goals you set. If you set a goal that you have no hope of achieving you will only demoralize yourself and erode your confidence.
However, resist the urge to set goals that are too easy. Accomplishing a goal that you didn't have to work very hard for can be an anticlimax at best, and can also make you fear setting future goals that carry a risk of non-achievement. By setting realistic yet challenging goals you hit the balance you need. These are the types of goals that require you to "raise the bar" and they bring the greatest personal satisfaction.
Set Relevant Goals
Goals should be relevant to the direction you want your life and career to take. By keeping goals aligned with this, you'll develop the focus you need to get ahead and do what you want. Set widely scattered and inconsistent goals, and you'll fritter your time - and your life - away.
Set Time-Bound Goals
You goals must have a deadline. This again, is so that you know when to celebrate your success. When you are working on a deadline, your sense of urgency increases and achievement will come that much quicker.
Rule #3: Set Goals in Writing
The physical act of writing down a goal makes it real and tangible. You have no excuse for forgetting about it. As you write, use the word "will" instead of "would like to" or "might". For example, "I will reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." Not, "I would like to reduce my operating expenses by 10% this year." The first goal statement has power and you can "see" yourself reducing expenses, the second lacks passion and gives you an out if you get sidetracked.
Tip 1:
Frame your goal statement positively. If you want to improve your retention rates say, "I will hold on to all existing employees for the next quarter" rather than "I will reduce employee turnover." The first one is motivating; the second one still has a get-out clause "allowing" you to succeed even if some employees leave.
Tip 2:
If you use a To Do List, make yourself a To Do List template that has your goals at the top of it. If you use an Action Program (see Mind Tools' Make Time for Success! course), then your goals should be at the top of your Project Catalog.)
Post your goals in visible places to remind yourself everyday of what it is you intend to do. Put them on your walls, desk, computer monitor, bathroom mirror or refrigerator as a constant reminder. You can even post them in the Mind Tools Career Excellence Club forum and share them with other members, for added motivation.
Rule #4: Make an Action Plan
This step is often missed in the process of goal setting. You get so focused on the outcome that you forget to plan all of the steps that are needed along the way. By writing out the individual steps, and then crossing each one off as you complete it, you'll realize that you are making progress towards your ultimate goal. This is especially important if your goal is big and demanding, or long-term. Read our article on Action Plans for more on how to do this.
Rule #5: Stick With It!
Remember, goal setting is an ongoing activity not just a means to an end. Build in reminders to keep you on track and remember to review your goals continuously. Your end destination may remain quite similar over the long term but the action plan you set for yourself along the way can change significantly. Make sure the relevance, value, and necessity remain high.
Key Points
Goal setting is much more than simply saying you want something to happen. Unless you clearly define exactly what you want and understand why you want it the first place, your odds of success are considerably reduced. By following the Five Golden Rules of Goal Setting you can set goals with confidence and enjoy the satisfaction that comes along with knowing you achieved what you set out to do. What will you decide to accomplish today?
Locke's Goal
Locke's Goal Setting Theory
Understanding SMART Goal Setting
Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people. The value of goal setting is so well recognized that entire management systems, like Management by Objectives, have goal setting basics incorporated within them.
In fact, goal setting theory is generally accepted as among the most valid and useful motivation theories in industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, and organizational behavior.
Many of us have learned - from bosses, seminars, and business articles - to set SMART goals. It seems natural to assume that by setting a goal that's Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound, we will be well on our way to accomplishing it.
But is this really the best way of setting goals?
To answer this, we look to Dr Edwin Locke's pioneering research on goal setting and motivation in the late 1960s. In his 1968 article "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives," he stated that employees were motivated by clear goals and appropriate feedback. Locke went on to say that working toward a goal provided a major source of motivation to actually reach the goal - which, in turn, improved performance.
This information does not seem revolutionary to most of us some 40 years later. This shows the impact his theory has had on professional and personal performance.
In this article, we look at what Locke had to say about goal setting, and how we can apply his theory to our own performance goals.
Goal Setting Theory
Locke's research showed that there was a relationship between how difficult and specific a goal was and people's performance of a task. He found that specific and difficult goals led to better task performance than vague or easy goals.
Telling someone to "Try hard" or "Do your best" is less effective than "Try to get more than 80% correct" or "Concentrate on beating your best time." Likewise, having a goal that's too easy is not a motivating force. Hard goals are more motivating than easy goals, because it's much more of an accomplishment to achieve something that you have to work for.
A few years after Locke published his article, another researcher, Dr Gary Latham, studied the effect of goal setting in the workplace. His results supported exactly what Locke had found, and the inseparable link between goal setting and workplace performance was formed.
In 1990, Locke and Latham published their seminal work, "A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance." In this book, they reinforced the need to set specific and difficult goals, and they outlined three other characteristics of successful goal setting.
Five Principles of Goal Setting
To motivate, goals must take into consideration the degree to which each of the following exists:
1. Clarity.
2. Challenge.
3. Commitment.
4. Feedback.
5. Task complexity.
Let's look at each of these in detail.
1. Clarity
Clear goals are measurable, unambiguous, and behavioral. When a goal is clear and specific, with a definite time set for completion, there is less misunderstanding about what behaviors will be rewarded. You know what's expected, and you can use the specific result as a source of motivation. When a goal is vague - or when it's expressed as a general instruction, like "Take initiative" - it has limited motivational value.
To improve your or your team's performance, set clear goals that use specific and measurable standards. "Reduce job turnover by 15%" or "Respond to employee suggestions within 48 hours" are examples of clear goals.
When you use the SMART acronym to help you set goals, you ensure the clarity of the goal by making it Specific, Measurable and Time-bound.
2. Challenge
One of the most important characteristics of goals is the level of challenge. People are often motivated by achievement, and they'll judge a goal based on the significance of the anticipated accomplishment. When you know that what you do will be well received, there's a natural motivation to do a good job.
Rewards typically increase for more difficult goals. If you believe you'll be well compensated or otherwise rewarded for achieving a challenging goal, that will boost your enthusiasm and your drive to get it done.
Setting SMART goals that are Relevant links closely to the rewards given for achieving challenging goals. Relevant goals will further the aims of your organization, and these are the kinds of goals that most employers will be happy to reward.
When setting goals, make each goal a challenge. If an assignment is easy and not viewed as very important - and if you or your employee doesn't expect the accomplishment to be significant - then the effort may not be impressive.
Note:
It's important to strike an appropriate balance between a challenging goal and a realistic goal. Setting a goal that you'll fail to achieve is possibly more de-motivating than setting a goal that's too easy. The need for success and achievement is strong, therefore people are best motivated by challenging, but realistic, goals. Ensuring that goals are Achievable or Attainable is one of the elements of SMART.
3. Commitment
Goals must be understood and agreed upon if they are to be effective. Employees are more likely to "buy into" a goal if they feel they were part of creating that goal. The notion of participative management rests on this idea of involving employees in setting goals and making decisions.
One version of SMART - for use when you are working with someone else to set their goals - has A and R stand for Agreed and Realistic instead of Attainable and Relevant. Agreed goals lead to commitment.
This doesn't mean that every goal has to be negotiated with and approved by employees. It does mean that goals should be consistent and in line with previous expectations and organizational concerns. As long as the employee believes the goal is consistent with the goals of the company, and believes the person assigning the goal is credible, then the commitment should be there.
Interestingly, goal commitment and difficulty often work together. The harder the goal, the more commitment is required. If you have an easy goal, you don't need a lot of motivation to get it done. When you're working on a difficult assignment, you will likely encounter challenges that require a deeper source of inspiration and incentive.
As you use goal setting in your workplace, make an appropriate effort to include people in their own goal setting. Encourage employees to develop their own goals, and keep them informed about what's happening elsewhere in the organization. This way, they can be sure that their goals are consistent with the overall vision and purpose that the company seeks.
4. Feedback
In addition to selecting the right type of goal, an effective goal program must also include feedback. Feedback provides opportunities to clarify expectations, adjust goal difficulty, and gain recognition. It's important to provide benchmark opportunities or targets, so individuals can determine for themselves how they're doing.
These regular progress reports, which measure specific success along the way, are particularly important where it's going to take a long time to reach a goal. In these cases, break down the goals into smaller chunks, and link feedback to these intermediate milestones.
SMART goals are Measurable, and this ensures that clear feedback is possible.
With all your goal setting efforts, make sure that you build in time for providing formal feedback. Certainly, informal check-ins are important, and they provide a means of giving regular encouragement and recognition. However, taking the time to sit down and discuss goal performance is a necessary factor in long-term performance improvement. See our article on Delegation for more on this.
5. Task Complexity
The last factor in goal setting theory introduces two more requirements for success. For goals or assignments that are highly complex, take special care to ensure that the work doesn't become too overwhelming.
People who work in complicated and demanding roles probably have a high level of motivation already. However, they can often push themselves too hard if measures aren't built into the goal expectations to account for the complexity of the task. It's therefore important to do the following:
* Give the person sufficient time to meet the goal or improve performance.
* Provide enough time for the person to practice or learn what is expected and required for success.
The whole point of goal setting is to facilitate success. Therefore, you want to make sure that the conditions surrounding the goals don't frustrate or inhibit people from accomplishing their objectives. This reinforces the "Attainable" part of SMART.
Key points:
Goal setting is something most of us recognize as necessary for our success.
By understanding goal setting theory, you can effectively apply the principles to goals that you or your team members set. Locke and Latham's research emphasizes the usefulness of SMART goal setting, and their theory continues to influence the way we set and measure performance today.
Use clear, challenging goals, and commit yourself to achieving them. Provide feedback on goal performance. Take into consideration the complexity of the task. If you follow these simple rules, your goal setting process will be much more successful . and your overall performance will improve.
Understanding SMART Goal Setting
Goal setting is a powerful way of motivating people. The value of goal setting is so well recognized that entire management systems, like Management by Objectives, have goal setting basics incorporated within them.
In fact, goal setting theory is generally accepted as among the most valid and useful motivation theories in industrial and organizational psychology, human resource management, and organizational behavior.
Many of us have learned - from bosses, seminars, and business articles - to set SMART goals. It seems natural to assume that by setting a goal that's Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound, we will be well on our way to accomplishing it.
But is this really the best way of setting goals?
To answer this, we look to Dr Edwin Locke's pioneering research on goal setting and motivation in the late 1960s. In his 1968 article "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives," he stated that employees were motivated by clear goals and appropriate feedback. Locke went on to say that working toward a goal provided a major source of motivation to actually reach the goal - which, in turn, improved performance.
This information does not seem revolutionary to most of us some 40 years later. This shows the impact his theory has had on professional and personal performance.
In this article, we look at what Locke had to say about goal setting, and how we can apply his theory to our own performance goals.
Goal Setting Theory
Locke's research showed that there was a relationship between how difficult and specific a goal was and people's performance of a task. He found that specific and difficult goals led to better task performance than vague or easy goals.
Telling someone to "Try hard" or "Do your best" is less effective than "Try to get more than 80% correct" or "Concentrate on beating your best time." Likewise, having a goal that's too easy is not a motivating force. Hard goals are more motivating than easy goals, because it's much more of an accomplishment to achieve something that you have to work for.
A few years after Locke published his article, another researcher, Dr Gary Latham, studied the effect of goal setting in the workplace. His results supported exactly what Locke had found, and the inseparable link between goal setting and workplace performance was formed.
In 1990, Locke and Latham published their seminal work, "A Theory of Goal Setting and Task Performance." In this book, they reinforced the need to set specific and difficult goals, and they outlined three other characteristics of successful goal setting.
Five Principles of Goal Setting
To motivate, goals must take into consideration the degree to which each of the following exists:
1. Clarity.
2. Challenge.
3. Commitment.
4. Feedback.
5. Task complexity.
Let's look at each of these in detail.
1. Clarity
Clear goals are measurable, unambiguous, and behavioral. When a goal is clear and specific, with a definite time set for completion, there is less misunderstanding about what behaviors will be rewarded. You know what's expected, and you can use the specific result as a source of motivation. When a goal is vague - or when it's expressed as a general instruction, like "Take initiative" - it has limited motivational value.
To improve your or your team's performance, set clear goals that use specific and measurable standards. "Reduce job turnover by 15%" or "Respond to employee suggestions within 48 hours" are examples of clear goals.
When you use the SMART acronym to help you set goals, you ensure the clarity of the goal by making it Specific, Measurable and Time-bound.
2. Challenge
One of the most important characteristics of goals is the level of challenge. People are often motivated by achievement, and they'll judge a goal based on the significance of the anticipated accomplishment. When you know that what you do will be well received, there's a natural motivation to do a good job.
Rewards typically increase for more difficult goals. If you believe you'll be well compensated or otherwise rewarded for achieving a challenging goal, that will boost your enthusiasm and your drive to get it done.
Setting SMART goals that are Relevant links closely to the rewards given for achieving challenging goals. Relevant goals will further the aims of your organization, and these are the kinds of goals that most employers will be happy to reward.
When setting goals, make each goal a challenge. If an assignment is easy and not viewed as very important - and if you or your employee doesn't expect the accomplishment to be significant - then the effort may not be impressive.
Note:
It's important to strike an appropriate balance between a challenging goal and a realistic goal. Setting a goal that you'll fail to achieve is possibly more de-motivating than setting a goal that's too easy. The need for success and achievement is strong, therefore people are best motivated by challenging, but realistic, goals. Ensuring that goals are Achievable or Attainable is one of the elements of SMART.
3. Commitment
Goals must be understood and agreed upon if they are to be effective. Employees are more likely to "buy into" a goal if they feel they were part of creating that goal. The notion of participative management rests on this idea of involving employees in setting goals and making decisions.
One version of SMART - for use when you are working with someone else to set their goals - has A and R stand for Agreed and Realistic instead of Attainable and Relevant. Agreed goals lead to commitment.
This doesn't mean that every goal has to be negotiated with and approved by employees. It does mean that goals should be consistent and in line with previous expectations and organizational concerns. As long as the employee believes the goal is consistent with the goals of the company, and believes the person assigning the goal is credible, then the commitment should be there.
Interestingly, goal commitment and difficulty often work together. The harder the goal, the more commitment is required. If you have an easy goal, you don't need a lot of motivation to get it done. When you're working on a difficult assignment, you will likely encounter challenges that require a deeper source of inspiration and incentive.
As you use goal setting in your workplace, make an appropriate effort to include people in their own goal setting. Encourage employees to develop their own goals, and keep them informed about what's happening elsewhere in the organization. This way, they can be sure that their goals are consistent with the overall vision and purpose that the company seeks.
4. Feedback
In addition to selecting the right type of goal, an effective goal program must also include feedback. Feedback provides opportunities to clarify expectations, adjust goal difficulty, and gain recognition. It's important to provide benchmark opportunities or targets, so individuals can determine for themselves how they're doing.
These regular progress reports, which measure specific success along the way, are particularly important where it's going to take a long time to reach a goal. In these cases, break down the goals into smaller chunks, and link feedback to these intermediate milestones.
SMART goals are Measurable, and this ensures that clear feedback is possible.
With all your goal setting efforts, make sure that you build in time for providing formal feedback. Certainly, informal check-ins are important, and they provide a means of giving regular encouragement and recognition. However, taking the time to sit down and discuss goal performance is a necessary factor in long-term performance improvement. See our article on Delegation for more on this.
5. Task Complexity
The last factor in goal setting theory introduces two more requirements for success. For goals or assignments that are highly complex, take special care to ensure that the work doesn't become too overwhelming.
People who work in complicated and demanding roles probably have a high level of motivation already. However, they can often push themselves too hard if measures aren't built into the goal expectations to account for the complexity of the task. It's therefore important to do the following:
* Give the person sufficient time to meet the goal or improve performance.
* Provide enough time for the person to practice or learn what is expected and required for success.
The whole point of goal setting is to facilitate success. Therefore, you want to make sure that the conditions surrounding the goals don't frustrate or inhibit people from accomplishing their objectives. This reinforces the "Attainable" part of SMART.
Key points:
Goal setting is something most of us recognize as necessary for our success.
By understanding goal setting theory, you can effectively apply the principles to goals that you or your team members set. Locke and Latham's research emphasizes the usefulness of SMART goal setting, and their theory continues to influence the way we set and measure performance today.
Use clear, challenging goals, and commit yourself to achieving them. Provide feedback on goal performance. Take into consideration the complexity of the task. If you follow these simple rules, your goal setting process will be much more successful . and your overall performance will improve.
Personal Goal Setting
Personal Goal Setting
Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
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Click this video to find out how to set powerful goals.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
*
Artistic:
Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
* Attitude:
Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
* Career:
What level do you want to reach in your career?
* Education:
Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
* Family:
Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
* Financial:
How much do you want to earn by what stage?
* Physical:
Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
* Pleasure:
How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
* Public Service:
Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
*
State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
*
Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
*
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
*
Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
*
Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
*
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
* Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
* S Specific
* M Measurable
* A Attainable
* R Relevant
* T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
* If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
* If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
* If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
* If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.
Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
* Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
* Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
* Motivating yourself; and
* Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!
Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
Spacer Spacer
Click this video to find out how to set powerful goals.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.
To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
*
Artistic:
Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
* Attitude:
Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
* Career:
What level do you want to reach in your career?
* Education:
Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
* Family:
Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
* Financial:
How much do you want to earn by what stage?
* Physical:
Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
* Pleasure:
How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
* Public Service:
Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.
As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.
Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
*
State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
*
Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
*
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
*
Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
*
Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
*
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
* Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.
SMART Goals:
A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
* S Specific
* M Measurable
* A Attainable
* R Relevant
* T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!
With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
* If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
* If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
* If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
* If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.
Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key points:
Goal setting is an important method of:
* Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
* Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
* Motivating yourself; and
* Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!
Effective Scheduling
Plan Your Time. Make Time for Yourself.
So far in this section of Mind Tools, we have looked at your priorities and your goals – these define what you aspire to do with your time. Scheduling is where these aspirations meet reality.
Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:
* Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time;
* Plan to make the best use of the time available;
* Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do;
* Preserve contingency time to handle 'the unexpected'; and
* Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others.
A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your commitments, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you. It is therefore your most important weapon for beating work overload.
How to Use the Tool:
Scheduling is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:
1.
Start by identifying the time you want to make available for your work. This will depend on the design of your job and on your personal goals in life.
2.
Next, block in the actions you absolutely must take to do a good job. These will often be the things you are assessed against.
For example, if you manage people, then you must make time available for coaching, supervision, and dealing with issues that arise. Similarly, you must allow time to communicate with your boss and key people around you. (While people may let you get away with 'neglecting them' in the short-term, your best time management efforts will surely be derailed if you do not set aside time for those who are important in your life.)
3.
Review your To Do List, and schedule in the high-priority, urgent activities, as well as the essential maintenance tasks that cannot be delegated and cannot be avoided.
4.
Next, block in appropriate contingency time. You will learn how much of this you need by experience. Normally, the more unpredictable your job, the more contingency time you need. The reality of many people's work is of constant interruption: Studies show some managers getting an average of as little as six minutes uninterrupted work done at a time.
Obviously, you cannot tell when interruptions will occur. However, by leaving space in your schedule, you give yourself the flexibility to rearrange your schedule to react effectively to urgent issues.
5.
What you now have left is your "discretionary time": the time available to deliver your priorities and achieve your goals. Review your Prioritized To Do List and personal goals, evaluate the time needed to achieve these actions, and schedule them in.
By the time you reach step 5, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first four steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way.
Remember that one of the most important ways people learn to achieve success is by maximizing the 'leverage' they can achieve with their time. They increase the amount of work they can manage by delegating work to other people, spending money outsourcing key tasks, or using technology to automate as much of their work as possible. This frees them up to achieve their goals.
Also, use this as an opportunity to review your To Do List and Personal Goals. Have you set goals that just aren't achievable with the time you have available? Are you taking on too many additional duties? Or are you treating things as being more important than they really are?
If your discretionary time is still limited, then you may need to renegotiate your workload. With a well-thought through schedule as evidence, you may find this surprisingly easy.
Key points:
Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness. This makes it one of the most important time management skills you can use.
Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.
Scheduling is then a five-step process:
1.
Identify the time you have available.
2.
Block in the essential tasks you must carry out to succeed in your job.
3.
Schedule in high priority urgent tasks and vital "house-keeping" activities.
4.
Block in appropriate contingency time to handle unpredictable interruptions.
5.
In the time that remains, schedule the activities that address your priorities and personal goals.
If you have little or no discretionary time left by the time you reach step five, then revisit the assumptions you have made in steps one to four.
So far in this section of Mind Tools, we have looked at your priorities and your goals – these define what you aspire to do with your time. Scheduling is where these aspirations meet reality.
Scheduling is the process by which you look at the time available to you, and plan how you will use it to achieve the goals you have identified. By using a schedule properly, you can:
* Understand what you can realistically achieve with your time;
* Plan to make the best use of the time available;
* Leave enough time for things you absolutely must do;
* Preserve contingency time to handle 'the unexpected'; and
* Minimize stress by avoiding over-commitment to others.
A well thought-through schedule allows you to manage your commitments, while still leaving you time to do the things that are important to you. It is therefore your most important weapon for beating work overload.
How to Use the Tool:
Scheduling is best done on a regular basis, for example at the start of every week. Go through the following steps in preparing your schedule:
1.
Start by identifying the time you want to make available for your work. This will depend on the design of your job and on your personal goals in life.
2.
Next, block in the actions you absolutely must take to do a good job. These will often be the things you are assessed against.
For example, if you manage people, then you must make time available for coaching, supervision, and dealing with issues that arise. Similarly, you must allow time to communicate with your boss and key people around you. (While people may let you get away with 'neglecting them' in the short-term, your best time management efforts will surely be derailed if you do not set aside time for those who are important in your life.)
3.
Review your To Do List, and schedule in the high-priority, urgent activities, as well as the essential maintenance tasks that cannot be delegated and cannot be avoided.
4.
Next, block in appropriate contingency time. You will learn how much of this you need by experience. Normally, the more unpredictable your job, the more contingency time you need. The reality of many people's work is of constant interruption: Studies show some managers getting an average of as little as six minutes uninterrupted work done at a time.
Obviously, you cannot tell when interruptions will occur. However, by leaving space in your schedule, you give yourself the flexibility to rearrange your schedule to react effectively to urgent issues.
5.
What you now have left is your "discretionary time": the time available to deliver your priorities and achieve your goals. Review your Prioritized To Do List and personal goals, evaluate the time needed to achieve these actions, and schedule them in.
By the time you reach step 5, you may find that you have little or no discretionary time available. If this is the case, then revisit the assumptions you used in the first four steps. Question whether things are absolutely necessary, whether they can be delegated, or whether they can be done in an abbreviated way.
Remember that one of the most important ways people learn to achieve success is by maximizing the 'leverage' they can achieve with their time. They increase the amount of work they can manage by delegating work to other people, spending money outsourcing key tasks, or using technology to automate as much of their work as possible. This frees them up to achieve their goals.
Also, use this as an opportunity to review your To Do List and Personal Goals. Have you set goals that just aren't achievable with the time you have available? Are you taking on too many additional duties? Or are you treating things as being more important than they really are?
If your discretionary time is still limited, then you may need to renegotiate your workload. With a well-thought through schedule as evidence, you may find this surprisingly easy.
Key points:
Scheduling is the process by which you plan your use of time. By scheduling effectively, you can reduce stress and maximize your effectiveness. This makes it one of the most important time management skills you can use.
Before you can schedule efficiently, you need an effective scheduling system. This can be a diary, calendar, paper-based organizer, PDA or a software package like MS Outlook. The best solution depends entirely on your circumstances.
Scheduling is then a five-step process:
1.
Identify the time you have available.
2.
Block in the essential tasks you must carry out to succeed in your job.
3.
Schedule in high priority urgent tasks and vital "house-keeping" activities.
4.
Block in appropriate contingency time to handle unpredictable interruptions.
5.
In the time that remains, schedule the activities that address your priorities and personal goals.
If you have little or no discretionary time left by the time you reach step five, then revisit the assumptions you have made in steps one to four.
Prioritization
Making best use of your time and resources
Prioritization is the essential skill you need to make the very best use of your own efforts and those of your team.
It is particularly important when time is limited and demands are seemingly unlimited. It helps you to allocate your time where it is most-needed and most wisely spent, freeing you and your team up from less important tasks that can be attended to later. or quietly dropped.
With good prioritization (and careful management of deprioritized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress, and move towards a successful conclusion. Without it, you'll flounder around, drowning in competing demands.
Simple Prioritization
At a simple level, you can prioritize based on time constraints, on the potential profitability or benefit of the task you're facing, or on the pressure you're under to complete a job:
* Prioritization based on project value or profitability is probably the most commonly-used and rational basis for prioritization. Whether this is based on a subjective guess at value or a sophisticated financial evaluation, it often gives the most efficient results.
* Time constraints are important where other people are depending on you to complete a task, and particularly where this task is on the critical path of an important project. Here, a small amount of your own effort can go a very long way.
* And it's a brave (and maybe foolish) person who resists his or her boss's pressure to complete a task, when that pressure is reasonable and legitimate.
Prioritization Tools
While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other prioritization and time management tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:
While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:
1.
Paired Comparison Analysis:
Paired Comparison Analysis is most useful where decision criteria are vague, subjective or inconsistent. It helps you prioritize options by asking you to compare each item on a list with all other items on the list individually. By deciding in each case which of the two is most important, you can consolidate results to get a prioritized list. Click here to find out more about Paired Comparison Analysis.
2. Grid Analysis:
Grid Analysis helps you prioritize a list of tasks where you need to take many different factors into consideration. Click here to learn how to use it.
3. The Action Priority Matrix:
This quick and simple diagramming technique asks you to plot the value of the task against the effort it will consume.
By doing this you can quickly spot the "quick wins" which will give you the greatest rewards in the shortest possible time, and avoid the "hard slogs" which soak up time for little eventual reward. This is an ingenious approach for making highly efficient prioritization decisions. Click here to find out more.
4. The Urgent/Important Matrix:
Similar to the Action Priority Matrix, this technique asks you to think about whether tasks are urgent or important.
Frequently, seemingly urgent tasks actually aren't that important. And often, really important activities (like working towards your life goals) just aren't that urgent. This approach helps you cut through this. Click here to find out more.
5. The Ansoff & Boston Matrices:
These give you quick "rules of thumb" for prioritizing the opportunities open to you.
The Ansoff Matrix helps you evaluate and prioritize opportunities by risk. The Boston Matrix does a similar job, helping you prioritize opportunities based on the attractiveness of a market and your ability to take advantage of it.
For more information on the Ansoff Matrix, click here: And for the Boston Matrix, see here.
6. Pareto Analysis:
Where you're facing a flurry of problems needing to be solved, Pareto Analysis helps you identify the most important changes to make.
It firstly asks you to group together the different types of problem you face, and then asks you to count the number of cases of each type of problem. By prioritizing the most common type of problem, you can focus your efforts on resolving it. This clears time to focus on the next set of problems, and so on.
For more information on Pareto Analysis, click here.
7. Nominal Group Technique:
Nominal Group Technique is a useful technique for prioritizing issues and projects within a group, giving everyone fair input into the prioritization process. This is particularly useful where consensus is important, and where a robust group decision needs to be made.
Using this tool, each group participant "nominates" his or her priority issues, and then ranks them on a scale, of say 1 to 10. The score for each issue is then added up, with issues then prioritized based on scores. The obvious fairness of this approach makes it particularly useful where prioritization is based on subjective criteria, and where people's "buy in" to the prioritization decision is needed.
Prioritization is the essential skill you need to make the very best use of your own efforts and those of your team.
It is particularly important when time is limited and demands are seemingly unlimited. It helps you to allocate your time where it is most-needed and most wisely spent, freeing you and your team up from less important tasks that can be attended to later. or quietly dropped.
With good prioritization (and careful management of deprioritized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress, and move towards a successful conclusion. Without it, you'll flounder around, drowning in competing demands.
Simple Prioritization
At a simple level, you can prioritize based on time constraints, on the potential profitability or benefit of the task you're facing, or on the pressure you're under to complete a job:
* Prioritization based on project value or profitability is probably the most commonly-used and rational basis for prioritization. Whether this is based on a subjective guess at value or a sophisticated financial evaluation, it often gives the most efficient results.
* Time constraints are important where other people are depending on you to complete a task, and particularly where this task is on the critical path of an important project. Here, a small amount of your own effort can go a very long way.
* And it's a brave (and maybe foolish) person who resists his or her boss's pressure to complete a task, when that pressure is reasonable and legitimate.
Prioritization Tools
While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other prioritization and time management tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:
While these simple approaches to prioritization suit many situations, there are plenty of special cases where you'll need other tools if you're going to be truly effective. We look at some of these below:
1.
Paired Comparison Analysis:
Paired Comparison Analysis is most useful where decision criteria are vague, subjective or inconsistent. It helps you prioritize options by asking you to compare each item on a list with all other items on the list individually. By deciding in each case which of the two is most important, you can consolidate results to get a prioritized list. Click here to find out more about Paired Comparison Analysis.
2. Grid Analysis:
Grid Analysis helps you prioritize a list of tasks where you need to take many different factors into consideration. Click here to learn how to use it.
3. The Action Priority Matrix:
This quick and simple diagramming technique asks you to plot the value of the task against the effort it will consume.
By doing this you can quickly spot the "quick wins" which will give you the greatest rewards in the shortest possible time, and avoid the "hard slogs" which soak up time for little eventual reward. This is an ingenious approach for making highly efficient prioritization decisions. Click here to find out more.
4. The Urgent/Important Matrix:
Similar to the Action Priority Matrix, this technique asks you to think about whether tasks are urgent or important.
Frequently, seemingly urgent tasks actually aren't that important. And often, really important activities (like working towards your life goals) just aren't that urgent. This approach helps you cut through this. Click here to find out more.
5. The Ansoff & Boston Matrices:
These give you quick "rules of thumb" for prioritizing the opportunities open to you.
The Ansoff Matrix helps you evaluate and prioritize opportunities by risk. The Boston Matrix does a similar job, helping you prioritize opportunities based on the attractiveness of a market and your ability to take advantage of it.
For more information on the Ansoff Matrix, click here: And for the Boston Matrix, see here.
6. Pareto Analysis:
Where you're facing a flurry of problems needing to be solved, Pareto Analysis helps you identify the most important changes to make.
It firstly asks you to group together the different types of problem you face, and then asks you to count the number of cases of each type of problem. By prioritizing the most common type of problem, you can focus your efforts on resolving it. This clears time to focus on the next set of problems, and so on.
For more information on Pareto Analysis, click here.
7. Nominal Group Technique:
Nominal Group Technique is a useful technique for prioritizing issues and projects within a group, giving everyone fair input into the prioritization process. This is particularly useful where consensus is important, and where a robust group decision needs to be made.
Using this tool, each group participant "nominates" his or her priority issues, and then ranks them on a scale, of say 1 to 10. The score for each issue is then added up, with issues then prioritized based on scores. The obvious fairness of this approach makes it particularly useful where prioritization is based on subjective criteria, and where people's "buy in" to the prioritization decision is needed.
Action Programs
Becoming Exceptionally Well Organized
You are probably familiar with the idea of "To-Do Lists."
To-Do Lists are great for managing a small number of tasks. The problem is that, for most of us, our To-Do List is not really a planned, focused action list. Rather, it is a sort of a catch-all for a lot of things that are unresolved and not yet translated into outcomes.
Specific entries, such as "Call Tina," exist along with vaguer aspirations, such as "Get started on house painting project." Often, the real actionable details of what the list-maker has "to do" are actually missing. (Take, for instance, the house painting project: more precise entries would be choose color scheme, buy paints, and so on.)
What this means is that you tend to do the specific tasks, and fail to make progress with the big, important projects. And even if you do get beyond the quick actions, having a complete project as a "to do" can lead you to focus all of your attention on it. This makes multi-tasking difficult.
This can be a serious problem in a job where you need to make progress on many different projects at the same time - and this is exactly the situation most senior managers find themselves in.
This is where Action Programs are useful. Action Programs are "industrial strength" versions of To-Do Lists.
Because they incorporate short-, medium- and long-term goals, they allow you to plan your time, without forgotten commitments coming in to blow your schedule apart. Because priorities are properly thought through, you'll be focusing on the things that matter, and not frittering your time away on low value activities. And because they support delegation, they help you get into the habit of delegating jobs where you can. All of this lets you save time - and get away on time - whilst also significantly increasing your effectiveness and productivity.
How to Use the Tool:
Follow this four-step procedure to create your Action Program:
Step 1. Collection
First, make a list inventory of all the things in your world that require resolution. Try to collect and write down everything - urgent or not, big or small, personal or professional - that you feel is incomplete and needs action from you to get completed.
To an extent, this collection is taking place automatically. E-mail requests are getting stored in your email account, memos demanding attention are being delivered to your in-tray, mail is reaching your mailbox and messages asking for action are accumulating on your voice mail.
But there is other stuff - stuff that is idling in your head, projects you want to run, things you intend to deal with lying at the bottom of the drawer, ideas written down on stray bits of paper - that need to be gathered and put in place too. Bring all of these actions and projects together and inventory them in one place.
And - this is really important - make sure that your personal goals are brought onto this list.
Tip 1:
You can experience tremendous stress if you have too many mental "To Dos" floating around in your head. You never know whether you've forgotten things, and you always have that terrible feeling of not having achieved everything you want to achieve.
By writing down everything on your Action Program, you can empty your mind of these stressful reminders and make sure you prioritize these actions coherently and consistently. This has the incidental benefit of helping you improve your concentration, simply because you do not have these distractions buzzing around your mind.
Tip 2:
The first time you create your Action Program, you're going to spend a while - maybe two hours - putting it together. This is the up front cost of organizing your life. However, once you've done it, you'll be amazed at how much more in control you feel. Also, it will take relatively little effort to keep your Program up-to-date after this.
Tip 3:
You'll find it easiest if you keep your Action Program on your computer as a word processor document. This will make it easy to put together, update and maintain on a routine basis without a lot of tedious redrafting.
Step 2. Pruning
Now, process the list you made in step 1, by looking carefully at each item.
Decide whether you should, actually, take action on it. A lot of what comes our way has no real relevance to us, or is really not important in the scale of things. If that is the case, then delete these things from your inventory.
Step 3. Organizing and Prioritizing
This comes in three parts.
First of all, review your inventory of items. For any which are separate, individual actions that make up part of a larger project, group these individual actions together into their projects.
For example, at home, you may want to improve your bathroom, and repaint your living room: these can go into a "Home Renovation" project. At work, you may be providing input into the requirements for a new computer system, and may be expected to test and then train your team on this system at a point in the future: all of these go into a "computer system" project.
What you'll find is that once you start, items will almost seem to "organize themselves" into coherent projects.
You also need to make sure that your personal goals are included as individual projects.
Second, review these projects, and allocate a priority to them (for example, by coding them from A to F) depending on their importance. Clearly, your personal goals are exceptionally important projects!
Third, insert your projects into a formatted Action Program.
The Action Program is split up into three parts:
1. A "Next Action List," which shows the small next actions that you will take to move your projects forward.
2. A "Delegated Actions List," which shows projects and actions have delegated to other people.
3. A "Project Catalog" that shows all of the projects you are engaged in and the small individual tasks that you have identified so far that contribute to them.
The great news is that, by this stage, you've already created the largest part of this: the Project Catalog! This is the list of prioritized projects and activities that you've just completed.
Typically, the Project Catalog is at the back of the Action Program, as it's often only referred to during a weekly review process.
Next, create the Delegated Actions List by working through your Project Catalog, and identifying tasks that you've delegated. Record these under the name of the person who you've delegated the activity to, along with the checkpoints you've agreed.
Tip:
If you haven't yet delegated anything, or you haven't yet agreed checkpoints, don't worry! What we're doing here is creating the right framework - you'll have plenty of time to use this framework properly!
Typically, the Delegated Actions List sits in front of the Project Catalog in your Action Program document, as it's referred to quite often.
Finally, create your Next Action List by working through the projects to which you've given the highest priority - the projects that you want and need to move forward on straight away - and extracting the small, logical next actions for these projects.
The Next Action List goes on the front page of your Action Program, as you'll refer to it many times a day.
Tip 1:
If the Next Action is going to take less than a couple of minutes, then why not do it right away? Make sure, though, that you come back and complete your Action Program!
Tip 2:
It's this selection of appropriate next actions that takes a certain amount of judgment. If one of your projects is of over-riding importance, then have several Next Actions from this project on your list, and keep other Next Actions to a bare minimum. However, if you need to keep a lot of projects "simmering away", have Next Actions from each on your list.
Tip 3:
Keep your Next Actions small and achievable, ideally taking no more that a couple of hours to complete. This helps you keep momentum up on projects and strongly enhances your sense of having had a productive, successful day.
If Next Actions are larger than this, break them down. For example, if your Next Action is to write an article, break this down into research, planning, writing, fact-checking and editing phases. Then make the research phase your Next Action, and put the rest of the stages in your project catalog.
Tip 4:
Where you have several Next Actions, prioritize them from A to F, depending on their importance, value, urgency and relevance to your goals.
Then monitor your success in dealing with these actions. If you find that actions are "stagnating" on your list, consider whether you should either cancel these projects, or whether you should raise their priority so that you deal with them.
Whatever you do, make sure you don't have too many actions on your Next Action List.
Tip 5:
As you work through this process, ask yourself if there are any tasks that you can delegate or, if appropriate, get help with. As you identify these, put these on your Next Action List, with the action being to delegate the task.
When you've delegated the task, move it onto your Delegated Actions List, along with the checkpoint times and dates you've agreed.
Now review the Next Action List. If it is too cluttered, move some of the less urgent/important jobs back into the project catalog. If it is thin and under-challenging, pull up some more Next Actions from the Project Catalog.
Also, it makes sense to prioritize the items (for example, from A-C) in the Next Action List so you know what to focus on (it's unlikely you'll have any Actions with a priority lower than C on your Next Action List).
Step 4. "Working" Your Action Program
An Action Program is typically fairly long. But you don't have to run through the entire Program every day!
Usually, you'll only be dealing with the top page or pages. Some activities may be day-specific or time-specific. Depending of the way you work, these can be either maintained as the top page of your Action Program or marked on your calendar.
In effect, these pages are just a new form of your old To-Do List. It is just that only specific short actions are outlined here, while the major projects to which the actions belong are stored in your Project Catalog.
What you must do, however, is review your Action Program periodically, for example, every week (put time for this in your schedule). Delete or archive items you've completed, move items from the Project Catalog to the front pages as you make progress on your project, and add any new actions that have come your way.
Summary:
The Action Program is an "industrial strength" version of the To-Do List. It helps you to process the projects you want to run into actionable activities, and then manage them within a three-tier structure.
The "Next Action List" heading lists the precise, immediate actions that you need to perform to move your projects forwards.
The "Delegated Actions List" records details of the projects and actions you have delegated.
The "Project Catalog" heading lists the projects that you want to work on, along with other actions non-urgent you have gathered that will contribute to the completion of these projects.
This approach helps you maintain focus on daily jobs and long-term goals at the same time, and it means that you always have a plan for "next action" at any moment. This puts you in control, and also gives you a real sense of achievement.
More than this, this approach helps you to multi-task effectively, helping you to manage and progress many projects simultaneously. This is particularly important as you progress your career, and as the jobs you take on become increasingly complex and challenging
You are probably familiar with the idea of "To-Do Lists."
To-Do Lists are great for managing a small number of tasks. The problem is that, for most of us, our To-Do List is not really a planned, focused action list. Rather, it is a sort of a catch-all for a lot of things that are unresolved and not yet translated into outcomes.
Specific entries, such as "Call Tina," exist along with vaguer aspirations, such as "Get started on house painting project." Often, the real actionable details of what the list-maker has "to do" are actually missing. (Take, for instance, the house painting project: more precise entries would be choose color scheme, buy paints, and so on.)
What this means is that you tend to do the specific tasks, and fail to make progress with the big, important projects. And even if you do get beyond the quick actions, having a complete project as a "to do" can lead you to focus all of your attention on it. This makes multi-tasking difficult.
This can be a serious problem in a job where you need to make progress on many different projects at the same time - and this is exactly the situation most senior managers find themselves in.
This is where Action Programs are useful. Action Programs are "industrial strength" versions of To-Do Lists.
Because they incorporate short-, medium- and long-term goals, they allow you to plan your time, without forgotten commitments coming in to blow your schedule apart. Because priorities are properly thought through, you'll be focusing on the things that matter, and not frittering your time away on low value activities. And because they support delegation, they help you get into the habit of delegating jobs where you can. All of this lets you save time - and get away on time - whilst also significantly increasing your effectiveness and productivity.
How to Use the Tool:
Follow this four-step procedure to create your Action Program:
Step 1. Collection
First, make a list inventory of all the things in your world that require resolution. Try to collect and write down everything - urgent or not, big or small, personal or professional - that you feel is incomplete and needs action from you to get completed.
To an extent, this collection is taking place automatically. E-mail requests are getting stored in your email account, memos demanding attention are being delivered to your in-tray, mail is reaching your mailbox and messages asking for action are accumulating on your voice mail.
But there is other stuff - stuff that is idling in your head, projects you want to run, things you intend to deal with lying at the bottom of the drawer, ideas written down on stray bits of paper - that need to be gathered and put in place too. Bring all of these actions and projects together and inventory them in one place.
And - this is really important - make sure that your personal goals are brought onto this list.
Tip 1:
You can experience tremendous stress if you have too many mental "To Dos" floating around in your head. You never know whether you've forgotten things, and you always have that terrible feeling of not having achieved everything you want to achieve.
By writing down everything on your Action Program, you can empty your mind of these stressful reminders and make sure you prioritize these actions coherently and consistently. This has the incidental benefit of helping you improve your concentration, simply because you do not have these distractions buzzing around your mind.
Tip 2:
The first time you create your Action Program, you're going to spend a while - maybe two hours - putting it together. This is the up front cost of organizing your life. However, once you've done it, you'll be amazed at how much more in control you feel. Also, it will take relatively little effort to keep your Program up-to-date after this.
Tip 3:
You'll find it easiest if you keep your Action Program on your computer as a word processor document. This will make it easy to put together, update and maintain on a routine basis without a lot of tedious redrafting.
Step 2. Pruning
Now, process the list you made in step 1, by looking carefully at each item.
Decide whether you should, actually, take action on it. A lot of what comes our way has no real relevance to us, or is really not important in the scale of things. If that is the case, then delete these things from your inventory.
Step 3. Organizing and Prioritizing
This comes in three parts.
First of all, review your inventory of items. For any which are separate, individual actions that make up part of a larger project, group these individual actions together into their projects.
For example, at home, you may want to improve your bathroom, and repaint your living room: these can go into a "Home Renovation" project. At work, you may be providing input into the requirements for a new computer system, and may be expected to test and then train your team on this system at a point in the future: all of these go into a "computer system" project.
What you'll find is that once you start, items will almost seem to "organize themselves" into coherent projects.
You also need to make sure that your personal goals are included as individual projects.
Second, review these projects, and allocate a priority to them (for example, by coding them from A to F) depending on their importance. Clearly, your personal goals are exceptionally important projects!
Third, insert your projects into a formatted Action Program.
The Action Program is split up into three parts:
1. A "Next Action List," which shows the small next actions that you will take to move your projects forward.
2. A "Delegated Actions List," which shows projects and actions have delegated to other people.
3. A "Project Catalog" that shows all of the projects you are engaged in and the small individual tasks that you have identified so far that contribute to them.
The great news is that, by this stage, you've already created the largest part of this: the Project Catalog! This is the list of prioritized projects and activities that you've just completed.
Typically, the Project Catalog is at the back of the Action Program, as it's often only referred to during a weekly review process.
Next, create the Delegated Actions List by working through your Project Catalog, and identifying tasks that you've delegated. Record these under the name of the person who you've delegated the activity to, along with the checkpoints you've agreed.
Tip:
If you haven't yet delegated anything, or you haven't yet agreed checkpoints, don't worry! What we're doing here is creating the right framework - you'll have plenty of time to use this framework properly!
Typically, the Delegated Actions List sits in front of the Project Catalog in your Action Program document, as it's referred to quite often.
Finally, create your Next Action List by working through the projects to which you've given the highest priority - the projects that you want and need to move forward on straight away - and extracting the small, logical next actions for these projects.
The Next Action List goes on the front page of your Action Program, as you'll refer to it many times a day.
Tip 1:
If the Next Action is going to take less than a couple of minutes, then why not do it right away? Make sure, though, that you come back and complete your Action Program!
Tip 2:
It's this selection of appropriate next actions that takes a certain amount of judgment. If one of your projects is of over-riding importance, then have several Next Actions from this project on your list, and keep other Next Actions to a bare minimum. However, if you need to keep a lot of projects "simmering away", have Next Actions from each on your list.
Tip 3:
Keep your Next Actions small and achievable, ideally taking no more that a couple of hours to complete. This helps you keep momentum up on projects and strongly enhances your sense of having had a productive, successful day.
If Next Actions are larger than this, break them down. For example, if your Next Action is to write an article, break this down into research, planning, writing, fact-checking and editing phases. Then make the research phase your Next Action, and put the rest of the stages in your project catalog.
Tip 4:
Where you have several Next Actions, prioritize them from A to F, depending on their importance, value, urgency and relevance to your goals.
Then monitor your success in dealing with these actions. If you find that actions are "stagnating" on your list, consider whether you should either cancel these projects, or whether you should raise their priority so that you deal with them.
Whatever you do, make sure you don't have too many actions on your Next Action List.
Tip 5:
As you work through this process, ask yourself if there are any tasks that you can delegate or, if appropriate, get help with. As you identify these, put these on your Next Action List, with the action being to delegate the task.
When you've delegated the task, move it onto your Delegated Actions List, along with the checkpoint times and dates you've agreed.
Now review the Next Action List. If it is too cluttered, move some of the less urgent/important jobs back into the project catalog. If it is thin and under-challenging, pull up some more Next Actions from the Project Catalog.
Also, it makes sense to prioritize the items (for example, from A-C) in the Next Action List so you know what to focus on (it's unlikely you'll have any Actions with a priority lower than C on your Next Action List).
Step 4. "Working" Your Action Program
An Action Program is typically fairly long. But you don't have to run through the entire Program every day!
Usually, you'll only be dealing with the top page or pages. Some activities may be day-specific or time-specific. Depending of the way you work, these can be either maintained as the top page of your Action Program or marked on your calendar.
In effect, these pages are just a new form of your old To-Do List. It is just that only specific short actions are outlined here, while the major projects to which the actions belong are stored in your Project Catalog.
What you must do, however, is review your Action Program periodically, for example, every week (put time for this in your schedule). Delete or archive items you've completed, move items from the Project Catalog to the front pages as you make progress on your project, and add any new actions that have come your way.
Summary:
The Action Program is an "industrial strength" version of the To-Do List. It helps you to process the projects you want to run into actionable activities, and then manage them within a three-tier structure.
The "Next Action List" heading lists the precise, immediate actions that you need to perform to move your projects forwards.
The "Delegated Actions List" records details of the projects and actions you have delegated.
The "Project Catalog" heading lists the projects that you want to work on, along with other actions non-urgent you have gathered that will contribute to the completion of these projects.
This approach helps you maintain focus on daily jobs and long-term goals at the same time, and it means that you always have a plan for "next action" at any moment. This puts you in control, and also gives you a real sense of achievement.
More than this, this approach helps you to multi-task effectively, helping you to manage and progress many projects simultaneously. This is particularly important as you progress your career, and as the jobs you take on become increasingly complex and challenging
To-Do Lists
The Key to Efficiency
Do you frequently feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you face a constant barrage of looming deadlines? Or do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?
All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper "To-Do List". To-Do Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.
While this sounds a simple thing to do, it's when people start to use To-Do Lists properly that they often make their first personal productivity / time management breakthrough, and start to make a real success of their careers.
By keeping a To-Do List, you make sure that you capture all of the tasks you have to complete in one place. This is essential if you're not going to forget things. And by prioritizing work, you plan the order in which you'll do things, so you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can quietly forget about until much, much later. This is essential if you're going to beat work overload. Without To-Do Lists, you'll seem dizzy, unfocused and unreliable to the people around you. With To-Do Lists, you'll be much better organized, and will seem much more reliable. This is very important!
Preparing a To-Do List
To start preparing your To-Do List, download our To Do List template.
Start by writing down all of the tasks that you need to complete, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything that you have to do, and until tasks are will take no more than 1-2 hours to complete. This may be a huge and intimidating list, but our next step makes it manageable!
Next, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.
You will then have a precise plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face. You will be able to tackle these in order of importance or urgency. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones.
Tip:
Once you're comfortable with use of To-Do Lists, you need to start differentiating between urgency and importance. For more on this, see our article on the Urgent/Important Matrix.
Using Your To-Do Lists
Different people use To-Do Lists in different ways in different situations: if you are in a sales-type role, a good way of motivating yourself is to keep your list relatively short and aim to complete it every day.
In an operational role, or if tasks are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to keep one list and 'chip away' at it.
It may be that you carry unimportant jobs from one To-Do List to the next. You may not be able to complete some very low priority jobs for several months. Only worry about this if you need to – if you are running up against a deadline for them, raise their priority.
If you have not used To-Do Lists before, try them now: They are one of the keys to being really productive and efficient.
Key points:
Prioritized To-Do Lists are fundamentally important to efficient work. If you use To-Do Lists, you will ensure that:
* You remember to carry out all necessary tasks
* You tackle the most important jobs first, and do not waste time on trivial tasks.
* You do not get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs
Do you frequently feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you face a constant barrage of looming deadlines? Or do you sometimes just forget to do something important, so that people have to chase you to get work done?
All of these are symptoms of not keeping a proper "To-Do List". To-Do Lists are prioritized lists of all the tasks that you need to carry out. They list everything that you have to do, with the most important tasks at the top of the list, and the least important tasks at the bottom.
While this sounds a simple thing to do, it's when people start to use To-Do Lists properly that they often make their first personal productivity / time management breakthrough, and start to make a real success of their careers.
By keeping a To-Do List, you make sure that you capture all of the tasks you have to complete in one place. This is essential if you're not going to forget things. And by prioritizing work, you plan the order in which you'll do things, so you can tell what needs your immediate attention, and what you can quietly forget about until much, much later. This is essential if you're going to beat work overload. Without To-Do Lists, you'll seem dizzy, unfocused and unreliable to the people around you. With To-Do Lists, you'll be much better organized, and will seem much more reliable. This is very important!
Preparing a To-Do List
To start preparing your To-Do List, download our To Do List template.
Start by writing down all of the tasks that you need to complete, and if they are large, break them down into their component elements. If these still seem large, break them down again. Do this until you have listed everything that you have to do, and until tasks are will take no more than 1-2 hours to complete. This may be a huge and intimidating list, but our next step makes it manageable!
Next, run through these jobs allocating priorities from A (very important, or very urgent) to F (unimportant, or not at all urgent). If too many tasks have a high priority, run through the list again and demote the less important ones. Once you have done this, rewrite the list in priority order.
You will then have a precise plan that you can use to eliminate the problems you face. You will be able to tackle these in order of importance or urgency. This allows you to separate important jobs from the many time-consuming trivial ones.
Tip:
Once you're comfortable with use of To-Do Lists, you need to start differentiating between urgency and importance. For more on this, see our article on the Urgent/Important Matrix.
Using Your To-Do Lists
Different people use To-Do Lists in different ways in different situations: if you are in a sales-type role, a good way of motivating yourself is to keep your list relatively short and aim to complete it every day.
In an operational role, or if tasks are large or dependent on too many other people, then it may be better to keep one list and 'chip away' at it.
It may be that you carry unimportant jobs from one To-Do List to the next. You may not be able to complete some very low priority jobs for several months. Only worry about this if you need to – if you are running up against a deadline for them, raise their priority.
If you have not used To-Do Lists before, try them now: They are one of the keys to being really productive and efficient.
Key points:
Prioritized To-Do Lists are fundamentally important to efficient work. If you use To-Do Lists, you will ensure that:
* You remember to carry out all necessary tasks
* You tackle the most important jobs first, and do not waste time on trivial tasks.
* You do not get stressed by a large number of unimportant jobs
Activity Logs
Find Out How You Really Spend Your Time
How long do you spend each day on unimportant things; Things that don't really contribute to your success at work? Do you KNOW how much time you've spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, making coffee and eating lunch? And how often have you thought, "I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day."
And are you aware of when in the day you check your e-mail, write important articles or do your long-term planning?
Most people find they function at different levels of effectiveness at different times of day as their energy levels fluctuate. Your effectiveness may vary depending on the amount of sugar in your blood, the length of time since you last took a break, routine distractions, stress, discomfort, or a range of other factors.
Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste! Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time spent on non-core tasks.
How to Use the Tool
Keeping an Activity Log for several days helps you to understand how you spend your time, and when you perform at your best. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them on this template. Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day. You may decide to integrate your activity log with a stress diary.
Learning from Your Log
Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your daily activity log. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!
You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these variables.
Your analysis should help you to free up extra time in your day by applying one of the following actions to most activities:
*
Eliminate jobs that your employer shouldn't be paying you to do. These may include tasks that someone else in the organization should be doing, possibly at a lower pay rate, or personal activities such as sending non-work e-mails.
*
Schedule your most challenging tasks for the times of day when your energy is highest. That way your work will be better and it should take you less time.
*
Try to minimize the number of times a day you switch between types of task. For example, read and reply to e-mails in blocks once in the morning and once in the afternoon only.
*
Reduce the amount of time spent on legitimate personal activities such as making coffee (take turns in your team to do this - it saves time and strengthens team spirit).
Key points:
Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.
By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-yield jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.
How long do you spend each day on unimportant things; Things that don't really contribute to your success at work? Do you KNOW how much time you've spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues, making coffee and eating lunch? And how often have you thought, "I could achieve so much more if I just had another half hour each day."
And are you aware of when in the day you check your e-mail, write important articles or do your long-term planning?
Most people find they function at different levels of effectiveness at different times of day as their energy levels fluctuate. Your effectiveness may vary depending on the amount of sugar in your blood, the length of time since you last took a break, routine distractions, stress, discomfort, or a range of other factors.
Activity logs help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the amount of time that you waste! Memory is a very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time spent on non-core tasks.
How to Use the Tool
Keeping an Activity Log for several days helps you to understand how you spend your time, and when you perform at your best. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to, note down the things you do as you do them on this template. Every time you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the change.
As well as recording activities, note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day. You may decide to integrate your activity log with a stress diary.
Learning from Your Log
Once you have logged your time for a few days, analyze your daily activity log. You may be alarmed to see the amount of time you spend doing low value jobs!
You may also see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, and flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks you take, the times and amounts you eat, and quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting with these variables.
Your analysis should help you to free up extra time in your day by applying one of the following actions to most activities:
*
Eliminate jobs that your employer shouldn't be paying you to do. These may include tasks that someone else in the organization should be doing, possibly at a lower pay rate, or personal activities such as sending non-work e-mails.
*
Schedule your most challenging tasks for the times of day when your energy is highest. That way your work will be better and it should take you less time.
*
Try to minimize the number of times a day you switch between types of task. For example, read and reply to e-mails in blocks once in the morning and once in the afternoon only.
*
Reduce the amount of time spent on legitimate personal activities such as making coffee (take turns in your team to do this - it saves time and strengthens team spirit).
Key points:
Activity logs are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness and effectiveness throughout the day.
By analyzing your activity log you will be able to identify and eliminate time-wasting or low-yield jobs. You will also know the times of day at which you are most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.
Beating Procrastination
Manage Your Time. Get It All Done.
If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them achieving things they're capable of and disrupts their careers.
The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes.
Why do we Procrastinate?
In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.
Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.
They may feel that they're doing the right thing by reacting fast. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest. Either way, by doing this, they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.
Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do.
Other causes of procrastination include:
* Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand
* A fear of failure or success
* Underdeveloped decision making skills
* Poor organizational skills
* Perfectionism ("I don't have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won't do it at all.")
How to Overcome Procrastination:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it must be recognized, dealt with and controlled before you miss opportunities or your career is derailed.
Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating
If you're honest with yourself, you probably know when you're procrastinating.
But to be sure, you first need to make sure you know your priorities. Putting off an unimportant task isn't procrastination, it's probably good prioritization. Use the Action Priority Matrix to identify your priorities, and then work from a Prioritized To Do List on a daily basis.
Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:
* Filling your day with low priority tasks from your To Do List;
* Reading an e-mail or request that you've noted in your notebook or on your To Do List more than once, without starting work on it or deciding when you're going to start work on it;
* Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or check your e-mails;
* Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, even though you know it's important;
* Regularly saying "Yes" to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.
Step 2: Work out WHY You're Procrastinating
Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task. But it's important to understand what the reasons for procrastination are for each situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.
Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:
* You find the task unpleasant; or
* You find the task overwhelming
Step 3: Get over it!
If you are putting something off because you just don't want to do it, and you really can't delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. The following approaches can be helpful here:
*
Make up your own rewards. For example, promise yourself a piece of tasty flapjack at lunchtime if you've completed a certain task.
*
Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works! This is the principle behind slimming and other self-help groups, and it is widely recognized as a highly effective approach.
*
Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
*
Work out the cost of your time to your employer. As your employers are paying you to do the things that they think are important, you're not delivering value for money if you're not doing those things. Shame yourself into getting going!
If you're putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:
*
Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan.
*
Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren't the logical first actions. You'll feel that you're achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.
Key points:
To have a good chance of conquering procrastination, you need to spot straight away that you're doing it. Then, you need to identify why you're procrastinating and taken appropriate steps to overcome the block.
Part of the solution is to develop good time management, organizational and personal effectiveness habits, such as those described in Make Time for Success! This helps you establish the right priorities, and manage your time in such a way that you make the most of the opportunities open to you.
If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over and over again, you’re not alone. In fact, many people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected by procrastination that it stops them achieving things they're capable of and disrupts their careers.
The key to controlling and ultimately combating this destructive habit is to recognize when you start procrastinating, understand why it happens (even to the best of us), and take active steps to better manage your time and outcomes.
Why do we Procrastinate?
In a nutshell, you procrastinate when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing something that is more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.
Procrastinators work as many hours in the day as other people (and often work longer hours) but they invest their time in the wrong tasks. Sometimes this is simply because they don't understand the difference between urgent tasks and important tasks, and jump straight into getting on with urgent tasks that aren't actually important.
They may feel that they're doing the right thing by reacting fast. Or they may not even think about their approach and simply be driven by the person whose demands are loudest. Either way, by doing this, they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.
Another common cause of procrastination is feeling overwhelmed by the task. You may not know where to begin. Or you may doubt that you have the skills or resources you think you need. So you seek comfort in doing tasks you know you're capable of completing. Unfortunately, the big task isn't going to go away – truly important tasks rarely do.
Other causes of procrastination include:
* Waiting for the “right” mood or the “right” time to tackle the important task at hand
* A fear of failure or success
* Underdeveloped decision making skills
* Poor organizational skills
* Perfectionism ("I don't have the right skills or resources to do this perfectly now, so I won't do it at all.")
How to Overcome Procrastination:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination, it must be recognized, dealt with and controlled before you miss opportunities or your career is derailed.
Step 1: Recognize that you're Procrastinating
If you're honest with yourself, you probably know when you're procrastinating.
But to be sure, you first need to make sure you know your priorities. Putting off an unimportant task isn't procrastination, it's probably good prioritization. Use the Action Priority Matrix to identify your priorities, and then work from a Prioritized To Do List on a daily basis.
Some useful indicators which will help you pull yourself up as soon as you start procrastinating include:
* Filling your day with low priority tasks from your To Do List;
* Reading an e-mail or request that you've noted in your notebook or on your To Do List more than once, without starting work on it or deciding when you're going to start work on it;
* Sitting down to start a high-priority task, and almost immediately going off to make a cup of coffee or check your e-mails;
* Leaving an item on your To Do list for a long time, even though you know it's important;
* Regularly saying "Yes" to unimportant tasks that others ask you to do, and filling your time with these instead of getting on with the important tasks already on your list.
Step 2: Work out WHY You're Procrastinating
Why you procrastinate can depend on both you and the task. But it's important to understand what the reasons for procrastination are for each situation, so that you can select the best approach for overcoming your reluctance to get going.
Common causes of procrastination were discussed in detail above, but they can often be reduced to two main reasons:
* You find the task unpleasant; or
* You find the task overwhelming
Step 3: Get over it!
If you are putting something off because you just don't want to do it, and you really can't delegate the work to someone else, you need to find ways of motivating yourself to get moving. The following approaches can be helpful here:
*
Make up your own rewards. For example, promise yourself a piece of tasty flapjack at lunchtime if you've completed a certain task.
*
Ask someone else to check up on you. Peer pressure works! This is the principle behind slimming and other self-help groups, and it is widely recognized as a highly effective approach.
*
Identify the unpleasant consequences of NOT doing the task.
*
Work out the cost of your time to your employer. As your employers are paying you to do the things that they think are important, you're not delivering value for money if you're not doing those things. Shame yourself into getting going!
If you're putting off starting a project because you find it overwhelming, you need to take a different approach. Here are some tips:
*
Break the project into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks. You may find it helpful to create an action plan.
*
Start with some quick, small tasks if you can, even if these aren't the logical first actions. You'll feel that you're achieving things, and so perhaps the whole project won't be so overwhelming after all.
Key points:
To have a good chance of conquering procrastination, you need to spot straight away that you're doing it. Then, you need to identify why you're procrastinating and taken appropriate steps to overcome the block.
Part of the solution is to develop good time management, organizational and personal effectiveness habits, such as those described in Make Time for Success! This helps you establish the right priorities, and manage your time in such a way that you make the most of the opportunities open to you.
Start Here!
Time Management - Start Here!
Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload.
Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function exceptionally well, even under intense pressure.
What's more, as you master these skills, you'll find that you take control of your workload, and say goodbye to the often intense stress of work overload.
At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:
Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, because they're not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most.
The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations.
By applying the time management tips and skills in this section you can optimize your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.
Time Management Tools
In this section, we start off with simple and practical techniques, so that you can get off to a quick start in taking control of your time. The articles on Beating Procrastination and Activity Logs help you quickly eliminate the most common time-wasters, while the articles on Action Plans and Prioritized To Do Lists teach simple techniques helping you focus on the most important short-term activities.
Work Smarter. Take Control of Your Workload.
Personal time management skills are essential skills for effective people. People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function exceptionally well, even under intense pressure.
What's more, as you master these skills, you'll find that you take control of your workload, and say goodbye to the often intense stress of work overload.
At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:
Concentrate on results, not on being busy
Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little, because they're not concentrating their effort on the things that matter the most.
The 80:20 Rule
This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This says that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. This means that the remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently that it is the norm in many situations.
By applying the time management tips and skills in this section you can optimize your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.
Time Management Tools
In this section, we start off with simple and practical techniques, so that you can get off to a quick start in taking control of your time. The articles on Beating Procrastination and Activity Logs help you quickly eliminate the most common time-wasters, while the articles on Action Plans and Prioritized To Do Lists teach simple techniques helping you focus on the most important short-term activities.
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